


Come Back In Two Halves

by levendis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alien Sex, Anxiety, Bodyswap, Dissociation, F/M, Other, Weird Fluff, gratuitous trope abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Oswald and The Clara embark on an exciting adventure of existential panic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back In Two Halves

"Charlie Brown In a Well"

At the bottom of the well  
my round head is no longer  
  
funny. I can not see  
the zig zag on my shirt or  
  
even the yellow. I touch the  
single hair on my head  
  
and hope that it never falls out.  
  
\- Jason Schneiderman

 

 

 

Clara was hiding in a closet with a talking lizard. It was not the strangest thing that had happened to her that day.

"We should go," the lizard said. "The guards will find us. Better to run than allow ourselves to be captured like insects."

"I promised the Doctor I'd meet him here. I'm not leaving."

"You trust that man too much. He is not your kin, not your mate. Why risk your life for him?"

"He's the Doctor. I'm Clara. Together we're the Doctor and Clara. There's no words for it, it just is. And that's more than enough for me. I'm not leaving." She tightened her grip on the sonic screwdriver.

"Bipedals," the lizard said, in a tone that implied she meant it as a slur. "Always over-complicating things."

 

(Clara did, in fact, wind up bailing on the sit-and-wait plan. Not because of anything her temporary closet-companion had said but because she'd re-evaluated the situation and decided the Doctor was probably in dire need of rescuing somewhere in the castle. This assumption turned out to be true. Still, she stood behind the general sentiment. Mostly.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

She'd thought she knew what that look meant, on Christmas. She'd thought she knew what his hand in hers meant as he tugged her over the threshold. She'd as much as admitted that she loved him, and then he'd asked her to run away with him, and she'd thought she knew what that meant.

He'd held her hand as they'd tumbled towards the console, babbling about supernovas, cultures who communicated through smell, rare meteorological events. He'd clung to her and he'd smiled tenderly and he'd pulled her close as he typed out the coordinates to an underwater city, like Atlantis but _better_ , and she'd thought -

So she'd kissed him.

In a novel, of course, this would have been the culminating moment. He would sweep her off her feet - or she would sweep him off his - and they'd let the moment carry them away, let passion reign. Everything would fall into place. In a movie, the music would swell. But this wasn't a novel, or a movie, or a VR stimpak. Real life doesn't have a narrative arc. He said 'hmm' and raised an eyebrow. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. They stepped away from each other, just enough.

She did not apologize; he did not make any cutting remark. They went to the planet that was 95% water, and she befriended an octopus, and the three of them saved the shoal from a sentient oil spill.

And as the second-to-last airlock closed he gave her that look again, and she kissed him again. This time he seemed to have been expecting it. Pliant but not exactly reciprocating, he stood still and let her run her fingers through his hair. She leaned back and stared at the bulkhead behind him.

"You can stop me, you know," she said. "Just tell me you don't want this, and I'll stop."

He made a noncommittal noise and said, "You're the boss."

 

 

* * *

 

 

After four days in ancient Egypt, back in the TARDIS shaking the sand out of their shoes, she tried again. She managed to get an arm around his back and her thigh between his legs before he bailed.

She watched his face, his body language: he was holding something back, of course, because he was always holding something back. Desire, fear, probably some decision he'd made in what he thought were her best interests. Something else, something she couldn't bring into focus (or maybe that was just a grain of sand caught in her eyelashes). On the whole, his reactions were resolutely refusing to fall into expected patterns. She knew what sexual tension felt like, looked like; this was - almost that.

"What are we?" she asked. "What is this?"

"Friends," he said, "and it's a TARDIS. Duh."

" _Doctor_."

He ducked behind the rotor, face distorted through the light and plastic. She followed, determined not to let him hide. Not now, not again. He wouldn't meet her eyes; she watched his hands instead. Adjusting dials, hunting and pecking at keyboards, brushing lightly against the telepathic interface.

"There's a word," he said, stalking around the console. "In Old High Gallifreyan. This might feel strange." He punched in a final sequence and flipped a switch. "The translation matrix is being suppressed now. Oh, that's odd." He hummed a bit, ran his tongue over his teeth. "You know, I so rarely hear my actual voice. Huh." He still sounded like himself, essentially, but the accent was less Scottish and more - other. "I don't think I like it. Now. The word."

"The word?" The echo she usually heard in her head when she was with the Doctor was gone. Her voice seemed flat, tinny, like listening to a recording of herself.

"[___]," he said.

"Sorry?"

"[___]." He looked at her expectantly, almost nervously.

The closest she could think of was Russian but that was entirely inaccurate. She couldn't quite hold the memory of it. Consonants, mainly. The rustling of dry leaves. Clockwork in reverse. "What's it mean?"

"You know those German words that mean an entire sentence? This is a novel."

"Summarize it, then."

He stared off past her shoulder. "Everything is connected. Everything exists in relationship to everything else. Nothing is all that important in and of itself, it's a thing's place in the - the network of meaning, that's important."

"Doctor, you're rambling."

"Does a shop ever close down, and then get replaced by a new shop, and instead of calling the new shop by its actual name, you say 'where the old shop used to be'?"

"No. My Nan does, though."

"Right. Well. Gallifreyan's a bit like that. Old High Gallifreyan especially. It's non-linear, contextual - "

"What does it _mean_?" Her voice small and compressed in her ears. The particular cadence of impatience. She was aware of language as an artificial construct, she was aware of herself making sounds, tongue to teeth and the roof of her mouth. It suddenly all seemed so strange.

"What do you want it to mean?"

It wouldn't be a confession, not really. He knew - he had to know, right? But it would be a decision, a path chosen. She chickened out. "'Friends', I guess. Close friends. Close friends who kiss each other sometimes."

He looked at her like he knew what it was she wasn't saying. "Near enough, I suppose."

 

 

* * *

 

 

She introduced him to the concept of treating yourself to material objects that you didn't need but that made you happy. He didn't get it until she mentioned self-sealing stembolts and chrono-ratchets (one of those was from _Star Trek_ and one of those she made up, but the general idea was communicated). He took them to the car boot sale at the end of the universe.

"I'd been hoping something along the lines of, you know, Intergalactic Sloane Street," she said, wrinkling her nose as a passing camel-thing sneezed loudly.

"You need to dream bigger, Clara," the Doctor said. "I'll meet you back at the TARDIS, I need to see a man about a torch."

It took an hour and more camel-sneezes than she wanted to dwell on before the gods of shopping smiled down upon her and she found The Thing. A particular necklace, buried in a box of necklaces, that was all but literally calling her name. She picked it up and mentally started choosing outfits to pair it with.

If this were Earth she would have said the stone was opal (but this wasn't Earth, so who knew), sunset pinks and oranges curling through it; set simply in a bluish-white metal, on a chain so fine it felt almost liquid. It was beautiful. She needed it.

But it was 500 fnorbejns, and while she wasn't entirely sure what the conversion rate was, she did know it was more than she could afford. "I'll give you one hundred," she said. "Which is twice what it's worth."

"Five hundred fnorbejns," the merchant replied testily. "Do not insult me with your paltry offer."

"One-fifty?" She smiled and leaned forward. _One-fifty and some shameless flirting._

"Five hundred," he repeated. "There is no negotiation. The price is the price."

"Fine, fine." She affected an air of nonchalance. "If you insist on being unreasonable, I'll take my business elsewhere."

"Please do." The merchant gave her a final withering stare then turned away, mandibles clicking.

She thought about just stealing the damn thing, then realized that was a terrible idea, since no jewelry was worth spending time in jail for. So she gave the necklace a final wistful look, and sighed, and headed back to the TARDIS.

"Clara?" The Doctor was running towards her. "Clara. Clara. _Clara._ I got you the pointless waste-of-money thing you wanted. I wasn't following you, just coincidentally nearby, and it seemed to appeal to your vanity, so. Here." He shoved the necklace into her hand and then pushed past her through the TARDIS door.

She followed him in. "You're so sweet," she said sarcastically. "Actually, no, that is really sweet. Thank you." She beamed at him, and put the necklace on. It clicked together - magnets, probably. "Really. Thank you, Doctor." She grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him.

For the first time, he kissed her back. She opened her mouth against his, parted his lips with her tongue. Finally, finally they were getting somewhere. The noises he was making, the way his hips were pressing against her -

Something was wrong. She pulled back and looked down at him. Wait. She looked down at herself. What?

"What?" She said it, it came from her, but that wasn't her voice.

"Uh oh," he said. She said. "That's not good." He touched his face, which was her face, tugged his hair, glanced down then back up with a gleeful smile. "We've done the thing!"

"The thing?"

He gestured between the two of them. "The _Freaky Friday_ thing. Your consciousness in my body, and vice-versa. It's either that or we've just exchanged outfits and then I was shrunk down. Or you were enlarged. But no, fairly certain it's the thing." He grinned again. "It's my first time, it's really quite exciting. Potentially deadly and definitely a bit awkward, though." He hopped up and down on one foot.

"You've never heard of _Alien_ but you've seen _Freaky Friday_? Nevermind, not important. The important question here is: why are we each other?"

He shrugged, still hopping. Shrugged again, lifting his arms up like he thought maybe he'd been transformed into an airplane. "Not sure. This necklace, maybe? I'll have to do some research." He tried to take the necklace off.

"It's stuck, isn't it." Swallowing down a wave of nausea, the words thick and fuzzy in her mouth. Thinking, well, obviously it was stuck, that's how cursed amulets in fairy tales worked, it made perfect sense.

"Apparently." He stopped tugging. "This calls for a more direct approach, I think."

He knocked over three boxes of widgets and fell down the stairs twice before he found something that would work. He stumbled towards her, holding an alarmingly large pair of bolt cutters. He gave them to her then gestured impatiently at the necklace, baring his neck. Her neck. His - oh, there was that nausea again.

"Hold still. I've got it, just-" Flinching much more than he probably appreciated, she hooked the jaw of the cutters around the chain and squeezed.

The necklace clattered to the floor. She closed her eyes, counted to five, and opened them again. And - nope. Still in the wrong body. She glared at the Doctor, who was using her face to make a terribly unconvincing everything-is-okay smile.

"Ta-dah," he said weakly.

"Put us back." The dissonance between the thoughts in her head and the sound of the words coming out of her mouth, in the Doctor's tenor and timbre but her Blackpool accent, was making her wonder if she'd even be the one to say that. "Back," she said, just to check. "Please. Now." She dropped the bolt cutters on the stairs, the sound of metal on metal echoing.

"Don't know how," he said. "We can try to find that merchant again, see if he knows anything, but we have to be prepared for the possibility that this is permanent."

" _Permanent_? This can't be permanent. I can't be you. And you absolutely cannot be me. If you can't fix it, I will."

He leaned over and pawed at his shoes - her favorite kitten heels, if he ruined them she would be unreasonably furious - until they unbuckled, and toed them off. "Ridiculous contraptions," he said. "How, exactly, do you plan on fixing this?"

"No clue. But hey, I'm the Doctor! I never have a clue, do I?" She whirled around to stomp off angrily, and promptly fell down. Waved him off when he moved to help her up, slowly managed to reassemble her limbs into something approaching a reasonable pose.

"I'm ignoring that." He rolled his eyes and tiptoed gingerly over to the console. "I'm taking you back home. Back to your flat, I mean. You're gonna go sit down, since you've forgotten how to stand up, and I'm gonna go do something clever." He grinned. Somehow it was still his grin, that stretched-wide manic one. On her face. Maybe this was a dream. It had to be a dream.

"I'm not leaving you," she said. But, for whatever reason, she complied when he shooed her towards the door. Her head wasn't working right. Maybe her brain was loose. If this was a dream, that was fine, because there were plenty of things she did in dreams that she didn't usually do. Maybe she could fly, that would be nice, she liked dreams where she could fly. With every ounce of willpower she had, and a little bit of grunting, she urged her feet off the ground.

It wasn't working.

"I'm going," he said. "Stay here, I'll be right back. I promise. Just - please don't move." He raised his eyebrows, like _seriously isn't this just so cool?_ , then bounded back into the TARDIS, arms flapping.

He looked like an idiot. He was making her look like an idiot, that was her looking like an idiot. She was intensely aware of her nose taking up far too much space in her field of view. This was not cool, not at all.

 

The door banged closed behind him and she was alone, in a flat where everything was the wrong scale. She pinched her arm, then pinched it again. She should have asked the Doctor to do the book test - she had two copies of _Pride and Predjudice_ , they could use that - she shouldn't have let him go, she should have slapped him so hard they popped back into place, she -

Needed to pull it together, is what she needed to do.

This was a thing that had happened and everything was fine. She spent five minutes learning how to walk without toppling over. She counted her fingers - there were ten - and she formed them into the shape needed to pick up a mug, which felt wrong, and looked wrong, and everything was awful.

Her hands were cold. There was a tugging sensation around where she imagined kidneys should be. A wave of panic - not her hands, not her kidneys, not her anything at all. She dropped the mug on the floor.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Twenty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds later (a fact she knew because she, somehow, just knew it, and wasn't that fun?) the TARDIS rematerialized in her kitchen. She picked up her left foot, and put it down in front of her, and then she picked up her right foot, and put it down, and by repeating this careful sequence of actions she gradually made it through the TARDIS door.

She was greeted by the sight of herself looking like an absolute wreck. Frizzy uncombed hair, no makeup and clearly an extended period of no moisturizer, an impending unibrow, and an outfit that did nothing for any part of her. Plimsolls, for fuck's sake. There was a stepladder tucked under his arm.

"You've wrecked me," she said. "A half hour and you're already running my body into the ground. Where did you even get those clothes, anyway?"

"It was - a little longer than half an hour, for me. And I got them from the TARDIS warddrobe, obviously, though it did take a while to find anything small enough. I never quite realized how unreasonably tiny you are." He flipped the stepladder open with an exagerrated flourish and sat down.

Her frown fell neatly into place. This face was made for complaining. "One, I'm a perfectly reasonable size. Two, you're one to talk, mister, with all your elbows and your intense cravings for sherbet flying saucers."

"I'm fairly certain I only have the two elbows. As for the candy thing - check your pockets, there should be something in there."

Begrudgingly, she dug in one of the coat's pockets, past the string and the - whatever that was - and found a crumpled paper bag. She grumpily chewed on a hot pink saucer as he explained that the vendor who'd sold her the necklace had mysteriously vanished, but he did have some promising leads. And stop slouching, please.

"I don't like being so far from the ground. It's upsetting." She tucked the empty paper bag into a pocket. "Could we please do something about this?" she asked, waving at him.

"How d'you mean?"

"I have a regimen. Which you obviously haven't followed. The makeup and clothing I'm willing to let slide, but you will _not_ continue to destroy my skin and hair. You're coming with me back to my flat, and you're letting me fix you."

With a minimum of fuss and perfunctory complaining, he followed her as she shuffled slowly out of the TARDIS. One or two jabs - _you look like an old man, I am an old man, ha ha very funny_ \- but he really was just letting her do this. Letting her lead him through her apartment, past the now-treacherous furniture, doorways not quite where she left them, into the bathroom, which seemed unpleasantly cramped.

And this was far more intimate than she'd planned.

She prodded him into position in front of the sink, hands firm and businesslike on his shoulders. The two of them in the mirror, this could almost be normal, or at least an acceptable level of strange. Their eyes met. For a second, she forgot which reflection was hers. Then he ducked his head and folded his arms, and she was watching herself make a familiar expression.

"So," she said. "Firstly. Hair. Conditioner. Take that jumper off, it's dry-clean only, I don't want it getting wet."

Frowning but acquiescing, he pulled the jumper over his head. He wasn't wearing anything underneath, aside from the most effective and least attractive sports bra she owned. Small mercies he'd managed even that.

She had, of course, seen herself shirtless before. Just not like this. Not as something apart from her, not with him inside. The panic rising again, and she pushed it down. She handed him a bathrobe (the dumpy one, not the sexy one), watched him fumble it on out of the corner of her eye. Slowly, gently and/or apprehensively, she pushed his head down beneath the running water.

His skin was soft and warm and buzzing under her hands. Her skin, or - stop. Shut up, knuckle down, get it done. She took a deep breath and started working the conditioner into his hair. A mechanical action, muscle-memory. Far too late, she realized that this was wholly unnecessary, that as startlingly incompetent as he could be when it came to every-day activities, he probably understood the basic concepts involved in washing hair. She could have gotten away with just supervising. It'd seemed like a good idea at the time, the obvious choice. Why, she wasn't entirely sure. But here they were.

She got it done. He frowned almost cartoonishly but stood still as she blowdried his hair, combed it out, pulled it up in a loose ponytail. Not devastatingly attractive, but it would have to do.

"Okay," she said uncertainly. She took a pair of tweezers from the cabinet and clicked them at him like castanets. "This part might make you sneeze, please do not be alarmed."

She backed him up against the sink. It was a strange feeling, physically crowding someone like this. She added it to her rapidly-growing pile of strange feelings. Hands hovering over his skin, she gingerly approached Wayward Eyebrow Hair #1, then yanked it without warning.

He jumped; she nearly poked his eye out with the tweezers.

"You didn't say you were going to _torture_ me." He was clutching his face with both hands, glaring at her between his fingers.

"Don't be a baby," she said. "Put your hands down."

He huffed, but said nothing, and eventually dropped his hands. Closed his eyes, set his jaw, but at least he was staying still. She leaned in again, close enough she could pretend she was just looking into a mirror. This was precision work, detail work, she could ignore the rest of him. The rest of all of this. She focused on conquering small enemies: the unibrow, the single straggly hair that insisted on growing out of her chin, the faint but ruthlessly ripped-off mustache.

"Are you okay?" she murmured, rubbing a thumb over the reddened skin on his upper lip. "Men don't handle waxing well, generally speaking."

"It's fine. I'm fine. Just hurry up and get it over with," he said breathily. She knew that voice. Oh, fuck.

She swallowed hard, then hurried up and got it over with. Ignoring the way he was white-knuckling the edge of the sink, his eyes screwed tightly shut, the tiny hip-twitches he couldn't entirely suppress. Ignoring the _smell_ , which, oh, she was getting loud and clear now, with this beaky Time Lord nose that somehow understood the molecules of things, that was interpreting his arousal as a complex temporal event.

The Doctor was in her body, and the Doctor was being turned on by weird kinks in her body, and she thought maybe she might actually start screaming.

"Do you always feel like this?" he asked, eyes still closed.

"Like what?"

"Warm. Receiving... enjoyment, from strong physical sensations, being in close proximity to - people."

"Sometimes. Why, don't you?"

"Not like this," he said quietly, almost whispering.

With a sinking feeling, she remembered kissing him - had he enjoyed it? Had he just been playing along? The way he'd always stepped away, changed the subject. Maybe he'd been humouring her. Maybe he'd managed to live for millennia without ever fully understanding the parameters of human sexual desire. Maybe they were both idiots. "Sorry," she said, and it was one of the most useless things to ever come out of her mouth.

"It's - it's okay. It's just different. Specific. Compact? Does that make any sense?"

"Not really, no." She leaned back against the wall, arms folded.

"How do you feel?" His eyes open now, wide and curious.

"Regretful and ashamed." Pitched like a joke but it wasn't, not at all.

He smiled, barely. "No. I mean, how is your human brain interpreting my body's reactions to external stimuli?"

So goddamn scientific. That professional detachment. "I don't know," she said, and maybe it was the truth. "You can do the lotioning yourself. Face, hands, don't be stingy." She grabbed the jar off the sink and pressed it into his hands. "I gotta go do a thing, important thing, just remembered. See you in a bit, yeah?"

 

(The important thing was stumbling like a newborn colt into her bedroom and locking the door behind her, and sliding down to the floor, head in her hands, wondering if Time Lords even had tear ducts and, if so, whether there was any particular trick to activating them. She stayed there until she heard the groan and wheeze of the TARDIS dematerializing.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

He came back, of course, after a respectable amount of time had passed. It wasn't as if he could leave her, leave half of himself here. The TARDIS reappeared in her living room, and the doors opened, and she found herself walking through.

They didn't talk. Not about what had happened, anyway. That was more than fine by her. What was there even to talk about? The ship drifted through the vortex while the Doctor dismantled a microwave. Clara sat in the guest bedroom practicing making a fist.

Bones, tendons, veins and wrinkled skin. Wrist flex, muscles tensing. Close-cut nails digging into the meat of her palm. _Focus._ She was here and this was her, and she was in control of this. The body she was wearing around. Hers, now, just temporarily - everything would be fine - the vertigo would pass - things would go back to normal and in the meantime, in the meantime she would be okay. She was here.

 

(The feeling of walking down a staircase, and expecting a final step where there wasn't one, over and over and over. And which was she less willing to dwell on: the foreign twist in her belly, or the familiar one? Her fingernails leaving marks on her palm.)

 

Another, less existentially-terrifying internal discomfort: she was hungry. What did he eat? Yogurt? Jelly babies? Raw onions, as if they were apples?

The fridge in the TARDIS kitchen was filled with neatly-wrapped sandwiches. She picked one at random. Tuna salad, and it was completely fine at first. Normal food, which tasted like she expected it to. Then she became aware of something else. She was holding the shape of the idea of tuna salad in her mouth. Chemical composition, chronological provenance. Information she couldn't quite interpret but was now in possession of. She swallowed, almost choked. Her head was spinning.

It was the single most overwhelming thing she'd ever eaten. She put it down, looked at it suspiciously. Maybe there was some sort of food pill she could take. Maybe she could get away without eating at all. Possibly she was just overreacting.

There was a rustling and clanking from the cupboard, and a door swung slowly open. A small grey square sat on the shelf. Food, probably. She picked it up and bit into it gingerly. It tasted like - nothing, really. Simple proteins, a handful of vitamins, sugar. It was wonderfully bland.

Through the vents, the TARDIS sighed at her. It sounded reluctant, wary.

"Thanks," she said, choking down the last of the generic nutrition unit. "I owe ya one."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _How does your hilariously miniscule brain interpret the vast symphony of the cosmos?_ , he'd asked, or something like that. And how did she feel? It'd been two days and she still didn't quite know. There were sensations she had no words for, anxieties she couldn't name. There was her deliberately maintained sense of self barricaded up inside her. There was a constant low-grade cringe, accompanied by something she hesitated to categorize as desire. An unsettled, unsettling connection to the world.

She realized that she'd been subconsciously avoiding touching anything more than she had to. Anything other than metal and the cotton against her skin. After the Great Grooming Disaster of 2015 (which they'd silently agreed to pretend never happened), she'd certainly shied away from him. That was a conscious decision. The rest was an automatic aversion, something telling her to keep her hands to herself.

And speaking of keeping her hands to herself: well, curiosity was a natural response, right? Who wouldn't be tempted to have a look around, take things for a test drive, when given a new and exciting set of genitals? She wanted to know how he worked, of course she did, how could she not?

She could ask, obviously, but he'd never give her a straight answer. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She stood in her bedroom on the TARDIS, in front of the full-length mirror, watching the small ways his body moved and shifted. Wondered how much of it was innate to him, and how much was her. Wondered what it would feel like, what he would feel if she ever managed to take him to bed. Wondered if he even felt anything at all.

It would be a breach of privacy. She didn't quite care. She stared at the reflection: maybe she wasn't here. Maybe this was him, and she was only watching. Watching him touch himself, for her.

One hand hovering over his belt buckle, and that's when the door slammed open.

"New plan. We go back in time and I punch myself in the face before I buy you that stupid amulet," the Doctor said as he flung himself onto the bed.

"That's a terrible idea, and you know it," she said. She was blushing, probably.

"I'm all out of good ideas." He picked at the blanket. "And mediocre ideas. Stupid non-plans are all I have left."

She sighed. Petulance aside, he had to be having a rough time too. She shouldn't forget that. "Are you alright?"

"I'm _human_ ," he said, as if that explained everything. "What were you doing before I came in?"

"What? Nothing. I mean, you know. Practicing being you, in case something comes up where that needs to happen."

He narrowed his eyes at her. Like he knew she was lying, but not sure why. "You're doing a terrible job of being me, but no one will notice. People are idiots." He was perched on the edge of the bed, hunched over, arms wrapped around his stomach. "Can you feel it?" he asked quietly.

"Feel what?"

"Time."

Is that what it was? The pull, the vertigo, the unknowable presence inside her. Time's current, threatening to pull her under. "I ate a tuna salad sandwich," she said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

He nodded. "Yeah." He looked lost. This was what she looked like when she felt lost. There was an ache inside her she couldn't place.

"Don't worry. You'll figure something out. We'll be fine. Okay?" She patted his shoulder. There was a spark of something running through her hand, gone before she could name it.

"Of course I'll figure something out," he muttered. "I'm the Doctor. It's what I do."

 

 

* * *

 

 

It had been three days and she still hadn't had to pee. Possibly she should be worried. There was a moment where she thought it might be an issue, but something inside her shifted and then it was gone. She had started sweating a lot, though. Was she peeing through her skin? This was horrifying. This really, really needed to be over. By yesterday.

She was passing time by pacing around the console room's second level. The Doctor was on the steps surrounded by books and tools and, for whatever reason, a vast quantity of lemons. Blearily, resentfully, she noted how comfortable and normal he looked. Plain, undoubtedly, but self-possessed and neatly kept. Not one to be outdone, she was lumbering around in circles, sweating heavily. The panic was back.

"Any new ideas? You know, about how to fix this? Please tell me you have a plan to fix this."

He looked up, eyebrow raised. "Possibly I have half a plan, yes. It's a bit complicated but the gist is that I upload our brains into the TARDIS and then put them back. Using a very clever device that I'm sure I'll be able to invent. Why, is there something wrong?"

"So many things are wrong, Doctor. Would you like the list in bullet point?" This was too close to losing it. She couldn't, she really couldn't lose it, not now. She inhaled and exhaled carefully, steadied herself. "Sorry. It's just. It's too much."

"And it's not enough," he said. He squinted at her. "You're very shiny. I don't remember ever being that shiny. D'you need a wash? And do I have to point out the hypocrisy of you harping on about my appearance when you're glistening like that?"

"I'm fine."

"You look like you're about to dissolve into a puddle of goo. Take a shower. Take care of yourself. You'll feel better, I promise."

She scowled, but let him shuffle her into the TARDIS baths, and allowed the ship to blast her with high-power water jets. Mechanically dressed in the fresh change of clothes left neatly folded on a bench, accepted the mug of tea he thrust into her hands when she finally returned to the console room. It was more a flavored sugar solution than anything approaching actual tea, and it ought to have been disgusting, but it was honestly one of the best things she'd ever tasted.

And he was right, she did feel better. Not that she was about to admit that out loud. "Mmm," she said, noncommittally.

He went back to his research and citrus. She circled twice around the room, then sat down in the wingback chair, feet touching the floor for once, listening to the white noise of the vortex outside.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

She wasn't sleeping, just laying down and daydreaming. It was as close as she'd come to sleep in the past four days, beyond the odd little moments where she stopped paying attention to the world around her. Four days awake and nothing to do but read and flip through 50,000 channels of intergalactic television, none of them with anything interesting on. All of time and all of space and she was slumped against the headboard of a bed this body didn't find particularly comfortable, book open in her lap to at least create the illusion that she was doing something more than nothing at all.

The Doctor knocked on the door as he opened it; she didn't feel like re-explaining basic etiquette, and settled for just ignoring him. "Clara," he said tightly. "Clara Clara Clara. You are awful." He closed the door and leaned against it, tapping out a staccato beat on the wood.

"You're not so great yourself," she replied. She turned a page in the Raymond Carver novel she was pretending to read.

"I mean, not you-you, you're - not bad. But this-" Pausing drumming to gesture at himself, hand fluttering from hair to legs. "This is terrible. How do you deal with it? How have you not gone mad? Are all humans crazy and I've just never noticed?" His voice too loud and too sharp, a note of panic clear beneath the irritation.

And oh, how strange it was to hear that not-quite-a-shout from outside her own head, the tone that meant she was only barely holding on. That he was, now.

"If it's so bad, fix it. Put us back where we belong." Flipping another page.

"I _can't_. I can't concentrate. I can barely make a cup of tea, let alone get any work done." He sighed melodramatically. "I'm useless, with all these distractions."

"What sort of distractions?" Socratic method, of course: she knew the answer, or at least she thought she knew.

He crumpled slowly to the floor, knees drawn up under his chin. "Hormones. Feelings. Things. Please don't make me say it."

Part of her didn't want to push the matter. Another part of her wanted nothing more than to take advantage of the situation. And why shouldn't she? He was desperate and she was curious and what was the harm, really? She snapped the book shut and plunked it down on the nightstand, swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.

That was how small she was, that tiny huddled thing. She walked over, awkwardly folding herself up until she was sitting next to him. "Hey," she said softly. "I could help."

He snorted. "Yeah. That's a fantastic idea."

"Do you have a better one? Look, you could be off somewhere searching Space Bing for _Time Lords Gone Wild_ and figuring out how to - take care of this, yourself. But you're not. You came to me with this, you're comfortable enough with me to take that first step. And maybe you can take the next step, too. Besides, I've-" She paused, reframed the sentence in her head. "I want this too. Not this exactly, obviously, I mean in general. Physical intimacy, with you." The phrase was stilted and unwieldy in her mouth. It was the best she could do on short notice. She waited.

"Okay," he said after an interminable silence, so quiet she almost missed it. "Okay."

The wierdness of this reasserted itself in her mind. She'd just offered to, essentially, fuck herself. He'd just consented to be fucked by himself. But she'd be lying if she said she didn't still somehow find it enticing.

And it wouldn't be difficult. She knew what she liked. She'd long since memorized the right spots to touch, the right pace to take. She could do this quickly and efficiently, and it would be fine, and then he'd stop panicking and get back to sorting out this mess.

It would be fine.

Letting out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, she turned to face him. She gave him a reassuring smile and leaned down to kiss him on the lips. Her hands automatically came up to cup his face before she realized something was wrong. Very wrong, and getting worse, and -

She scrambled away, collapsing on the floor. " _What the fuck_."

He was bending over her, eyes wide, close but carefully avoiding physical contact. "It can translate as pain, if you're not careful. I'm sorry, I should have stopped you. I - I forgot which of us was which, I think."

"What? What 'it'? What just happened?" Her voice was cracking. She couldn't stop shaking. Everything hurt, bone-deep, like her body was trying to pull itself apart.

"Information. About this body, about me. Everything we've done, will do, might possibly do in an alternate dimension. It's - a sort of telepathy."

It didn't feel much like information. Just blind agony, her skull splitting at the seams, skin stretching taut enough to break. A scream she couldn't find the wherewithal to vocalize, crowding in her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut. "That's nice," she choked out. "I want to die."

"It'll pass," he said, or she thought he said.

Eventually, the feeling dwindled. Eventually she opened her eyes and looked over: he was still there, kneeling with his hands folded in his lap, staring back at her with open relief.

"Feeling better?" he asked. His voice was softer and more gentle then she remembered it ever being, but then again, that was her voice he was using.

"Kind of." She rolled over onto her back, then somehow managed to force herself upright. "Why didn't that happen before?"

He shrugged. "No clue, honestly. Maybe your consciousness needed time to fully link with my brain. Maybe there's a solar flare or a temporal storm or - I don't know. Doesn't matter. Hold out your hand."

She did. He reached over and dropped a sugar cube into her palm.

"Don't chew it, just put it under your tongue." He gave her the I Know More Than You So Shush look. An undercurrent of some other emotion, something strangled and anxious.

Her brain was still piecing itself back together. Was this supposed to make sense? "Why?"

"It'll help. I forget why exactly, but it does. Something about regulating body chemistry. I skipped that class at the Academy."

So she was hypoglycemic now, or the Time Lord equivilent thereof. She let the sugar cube dissolve in her mouth. "Does that happen every time you touch someone? Every time you touch me?" It came out a little garbled, her tongue working around the sugar cube.

"It used to. It doesn't any more. I learned to control it. Besides, it's much worse for you, with your limited human consciousness. You have my physiology, not my mental capacity."

She glared at him. "I'm really not in the mood to deal with your superiority complex."

"Right. No, sorry." He shifted away from her, staring down at his hands, worrying at the ring he'd started wearing - some Top Shop tat - on the same finger she wore his. "And I'm sorry you have to deal with this. You're doing remarkably well, considering."

"Considering I'm human?"

"Considering you're untrained." He smiled carefully, hesitantly. "I have an idea, if you feel up to walking."

He led her through what felt like miles of corridors, the TARDIS begrudgingly making them a path. She felt an odd sense of inevitability. They were going, they would always be going, they could not help but go. Their destination was blurred but somehow particular, like something seen from a great distance.

She knew before he told her where to stop, knew to put her hand against the blank wall, knew that the ship would shift and reform under her touch. A door appeared; she opened it.

"The Zero Room. Totally free of distractions and sensory input. I used to meditate here, before - well. I'm not very good at being alone with myself, these days. But I think it'll be good for you."

"It's very - white." Not painted-room white, or plastic-white, but a total absence of color and texture. It could have gone on forever, it could have ended an inch away. She knew there was a floor because her feet met with resistance. Other than that, there were no cues to anchor it as a real, physical space. Nothing to anchor her. This was not fear she was feeling, not quite. Her ears popped.

"Try to focus," he said. "Try to relax." He gave her a sympathetic, apologetic look as he closed the door.

And she was alone. She felt gravity lowering, lowering, til she lifted up onto her toes and then floated off the floor entirely. Weightless in the white and silence. All she could hear was two hearts beating. All she could feel was the body she was swimming in. There was nothing in the universe but her.

Artron energy, he'd said. That's what it was, the thing flowing through her she didn't recognize. He'd never been meant to have it, most Time Lords weren't, it was generally just something time travelers picked up traces of. Not something inherent, built-in. But there it was.

 _They changed me_ , he'd said, and the pain and resentment in his eyes was enough to keep her from asking what that meant.

She drifted. She listened to the body around her move and hum. Time passed. Time moved inside her. She tried not to think - she failed; she thought about easy things, good things, poems she had memorized, songs her mother had sung her to sleep with. She didn't fall asleep, not quite. She slowed down. Things in general slowed down. She drifted.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Five days. It was getting easier, or maybe that was wishful thinking. Five days, and she could see the edges of that, could just barely hold the shape of it in her head, an object in time, of time, the paths of their lives bending around it. An event, one of an infinite number of events.

An event that she knew was about to end. One way or another. The edges of it approaching from out of the corner of her eye, the network contracting and solidifying. Possibilities narrowing.

She convinced the Doctor to take them out - anywhere, didn't matter, just someplace not here - and he'd said _if anything happens to either of us_ and _I suppose it couldn't hurt, as long as we avoid any alien invasions._

They had to pull the lever together. She had the Imprimatur and he had the will, and the ship didn't know what to make of the two of them, its pilot split into independent entities. Neither of them alone was enough to get it to budge. Each holding the suggestion of a destination carefully in their minds, a request politely made; the ship warily followed their lead.

Her hand covering his, the ratcheting arc, a feeling of pleasure and fear as something locked into place. These were the ship's emotions, she realized. She felt a sensation very much like her hand being held, if her hand were an organ located between her hearts.

A spring relaxing, snapping back into shape. They landed. Outside, a park: grass the oddest shade of blue, carefully-manicured topiary spiraling red and sharp above them. Two suns, a slight breeze.

"The Royal Gardens of Petraxia," he said. "The palace is two planets over. Funny story, actually, I wound up there once..."

She let him talk, but didn't really listen. Something about accidental operas and intergalactic intrigue. They walked, shoes crunching in the gravel. The suns beat down on the back of her neck.

The heat and the light and their shadows splaying out ahead of them. The Doctor was talking about Wagner, skipping a little to keep up. She found herself closing her eyes, relying on sound and atmospheric pressure to guide her, focusing wholly on her skin warming, flushing, prickling. Basking like a lizard on a rock.

He leaned over, shoulder pressing into her arm. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Let it overwhelm you. Don't forget what you are. You might find yourself becoming something else." His tone was sharp but matter-of-fact.

"You're not being metaphorical, are you?" She opened her eyes, blinking against the glare of the setting suns. Something in flux inside her, something stretching out - or maybe that was just her imagination.

"Not entirely, no," he said.

The path had looped back around to where they'd left the TARDIS. Twilight was falling, the ship's blue turned black against the sky. She pressed a hand to its side, to the rough wood it presented itself as, and to the creature it was beneath. Suddenly realizing she'd missed it, in the short time they'd been away; realizing she had something approaching a craving, a physical need to stay close to it. Even if it didn't trust her to fly it on her own, she had the distinct impression that they had somehow been - bonded.

The Doctor gave her a knowing look, then stepped through the doorway without a word.

 

 

* * *

 

 

On the sixth day of this - give or take, since what even was a day in the vortex, anyway? - on the sixth-ish day Clara stepped into the console room and understood that it was over. This was a turning point, an inevitable change impending. She wasn't as relieved as she might have been.

"It's done," the Doctor said. "I think. Put this on." He pulled his goggles off and handed her a bracelet.

"Another cursed artifact?" She slipped it on her wrist and turned it around slowly, looking askance at the messy wiring and the uncut red stone set in what appeared to be bubblegum.

"A brilliant piece of technology I just finished inventing. I used some of your jewelry as a base, hope you don't mind." He put on a matching bracelet, picked out one of the trailing wires and stripped off the coating with his teeth. He took her hand. "Keep still. Please." Holding her wrist gently, he wrapped the end of the wire around a pin on her bracelet, then zapped the connection with the sonic screwdriver.

"If this doesn't work-" She didn't bother finishing the sentence. They both knew all the ways it could end.

 

He pushed a button. There was a lurch, and she found herself on the floor.

 

She found herself. Actually, properly herself. She gave herself a thorough once-over. Hair: check. Face: check. Hands: oh, gross, he'd been biting his nails. But check. It had worked. She was 100% Clara Oswald, and she'd never been happier about that fact.

"Hi there," he said. He reached down and offered his hand, pulled her up to her feet.

"Hey." She wrapped her arms around herself. She'd almost forgotten what she should feel like, what angle she saw the world from. Small and compact again, the normal human senses. There was an obscure sense of loss, the idea of an absence, something missing, something gone. Dwindling, like the memory of a dream slipping away after waking.

He was stretching like a cat, humming contentedly. Whatever she'd lost, he'd regained. "It'll take weeks to put everything back where it belongs. You moved my spleen over to the left two inches, you realize."

"And you ruined my manicure," she said, to cover her discomfort at learning that moving internal organs had apparently been something she'd been able to do. Unless he was joking. She couldn't quite tell.

A pause lingered, turned awkward. They hovered. A clock somewhere was ticking, slightly off-beat.

 

"We should talk," he said finally, as if the words physically hurt his mouth to say. "About what happened."

"It can wait." She cracked her knuckles, then her neck, giving him the Not Now, Doctor look. The not-too-stern one, the see-ya-later one.

"We've waited long enough." And he was giving her his own Look, eyes hooded and impossibly dark.

"Right," she said, her mouth dry. That stare was pinning her in place, sending a shiver down her spine. She blinked, and it was gone, replaced by a more familiar expression: uncertainty, a thin layer of exasperation over the vulnerability.

He took a deep breath, presumably steeling himself for whatever he was about to say. "Okay. So. I used to find you physically attractive. When I was, you know, all bow-tie and stupid hair."

"Oh, wow, you really know what to say to a girl, huh?" She rolled her eyes.

He winced. "Sorry. That came out wrong. But it's true. I used to be infatuated with you. With your body, your - things." He pointed at her breasts. "And so on. I lost that when I regenerated. I don't see you like that now."

"Really not making it better."

"I'm _trying_." He sighed heavily, looked up to the spinning disks of the time rotor as if for guidance, then back down to her, holding her gaze. "I see you. Not your shell. You. And you're beautiful, Clara Oswald." He brushed his hand along her jaw, long fingers sliding beneath her ear, around the nape of her neck. Thumb on a pulse point, pressing gently. Then he dropped his arm to his side, fingers clenching into a fist. "When I touch you, I feel you as you are, as you were, will be, could be, might have been. The you-ness of you. If I concentrate."

"That's - a bit more than I can feel." She hadn't quite expected to feel inadequate, not at this stage.

He shook his head, furrowed his brow. "Not more. Different. I was in you, remember, I was you, I know how powerful your sensations are. And frankly, I find you overwhelming." He paused, looked away. "You terrify me sometimes. How I feel for you, what I - want, from you. It's not, I can't-"

She waited, biting back the impulse to finish his sentence for him.

"I want to hold you," he said finally, and shrugged, like that wasn't quite what he wanted to say, but it would have to do.

She'd never admit to his face how endearing she found that simple declaration, his sweet, boyish awkwardness. He couldn't know, he'd never let her live it down. "It won't hurt?" she asked. "Like it hurt me, when we were all _Freaky Friday_?"

"No more than I want it to," he said. "Wait. No. That came out wrong, what I mean is-"

"Shut up." She hooked an arm around his neck and pulled him down, pressed her lips against his, silencing whatever retort he'd been about to make. She held him there until he relaxed. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Can we. Lie down?"

 

She didn't know whether she wanted to kiss him again or bundle him up and carry him around. She settled for taking his hand and leading him to the guest bed room, or really her bedroom now, if she were honest about it. She kicked off her heels and moved to embrace him.

He held up a hand just in time to gently push her back. "I know what you're expecting. I'm not an idiot. Well, I am an idiot sometimes, but. I'm aware of what humans do. Not all humans, humans in general-"

"Doctor. You're rambling again." She folded her arms.

"I'm not Danny. I'm not human. I don't work like your boyfriends did, I can't give you what they did. I don't think I can give you what you want. What you deserve. I'll give you whatever I'm able to. It'll be different from what you're used to. I wanted you to know that, before we-" He waved vaguely at the space between them. "Do things."

"What I want is you. And if different or weird was a problem, I would've run away a long time ago." She put a hand on his chest, straddling his hearts; kissed him on the cheek, trying to put as much into it as she could. It's okay, it's alright, don't worry.

She undressed slowly, not breaking eye contact more than she had to. He stood still and let her undress him. Her fingers trembled with the effort of not rushing, not tearing his clothes off and throwing him onto the bed. She'd waited long enough, she could afford the time it would take to not steamroller him.

Despite having worn it around for six days, this was the first time she'd really seen his body. Not that the attraction had ever been purely physical, but it was nice to know he looked essentially like what she'd imagined. Spare and wiry, grey hair scattered across his chest and trailing down to a reassuringly average cock.

"Doesn't seem all that different to me," she said, and waggled her eyebrows.

"Humans and Time Lords are technically compatible. Technically." He looked away. "The degree of similarity varies."

(He'd said they'd changed him. He'd said she could change him and she'd felt - something. All the mysteries and genetic bravado of his race, that she'd felt but never quite understood, that he'd refused to explain. She wondered how much of him was because it was what he thought she'd want to see.

It didn't matter. This was what he was now.)

He was lying flat on his back, arranged almost primly on the bed. "One more thing. Two more things. Three - no, just two. Firstly, there's gonna be some telepathic stuff. Item B, there's the possibility we might become sort of bonded in a physiological sense, which-"

"Bloody hell, Doctor, can we just get on with it?" Mock-exasperated, a little actually-exasperated, because he was talking too much and she was getting antsy.

She lowered her body over his, arms propped up either side of him. Skin to skin, something unknown and tantalizing between them, a newly-discovered desire mixing with her arousal. He was growing hard beneath her. She reminded herself to breathe evenly, fought off the urge to grind against him. She knew, somehow, she knew how delicate this was.

His pupils were blown, tendons flexing in his neck. "Clara. I'm serious. We do this, I'll need you even more than I need you already, which is a fairly selfish amount. I'm not just talking metaphorically, either."

"Relax. Let it happen." She shifted up and kissed his forehead gently, then the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth. "It's okay to be scared." She lifted up slightly, enough to reach between them and guide him inside her. She slid down, a noise alarmingly close to a whimper escaping her lips.

A burst of something flowed through her. She gritted her teeth. Information she couldn't interpret, again, but softer now, warmer and more enjoyable than it'd been in his body. Tempered and directed, although she got the feeling he was only barely in control of it.

They weren't moving. They should be moving. She sat back, brushed the hair out of her eyes, pulled her knees tight against his sides. And she'd meant, she'd meant to start riding him, because that's what you did in this situation, but instead she just sat there. Something was pulling taut between them. A connection fraying, something she couldn't let break, and she found herself lying back down on top of him.

"What is this?" she asked, mouth half-pressed against his collarbone.

When he replied, it wasn't out loud. _It is what it is. There's a word. Do you want it?_

"Maybe later," she said. Not everything needed a word. Maybe she liked not knowing.

His arms were around her, fingers splayed on her lower back. He rolled them over on their sides, pillows shuffling around obligingly - _they're mildly sentient, don't worry_ \- she wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck; they tangled up around each other.

And they were moving, just slowly.

She felt pleasure: not localized but full-body, an all-encompassing thing. Head to the tips of her toes, and to what, if she were the religious sort, she would have called her soul. It was undeniably sexual but utterly unlike anything she'd ever experienced. She felt the edges of him flickering around her, skin vibrating, muscles flexing, a buzzing psychic caress. Something neither physical nor mental pushing gently into her, something foreign and undefinable; she spared a moment to be alarmed before allowing herself to sink fully into his embrace.

He gave her a glimpse into what he felt, reflected his pleasure back into her. The joy of this, the almost frightening need for this, for her. She was curling around his hearts, and he saw the universe inside her, and he saw the locus of time in her, and she was the pivot from which the pendulum swung. She was everything, and the hugeness of that threatened to overwhelm her.

Sensing her reluctance - or fear - or whatever it was that she was feeling, he retreated, resumed focus on pleasing her physically. Muscles, skin, nerve endings. Every inch, every second of her, held with care and affection and a close analogue of lust. She could push him back, and he'd go willingly; she guided him around her, at first, to her breasts and cunt and that spot on the base of her neck which, when properly stroked, would make her melt. After a while, she stopped, and let him find his own path.

And blanketing them, surrounding them, the TARDIS. Almost as if it laid beside them, between them, holding them together, linking the three of them. This was not as strange as it might have been. The ship loved them, she knew. The ship wanted them to be happy. It felt right. It felt expected, even necessary.

She stopped looking for friction, for release. She found the pieces of herself she had left in him. She found the spaces he had made for her - he had built himself around her - the places she had always been meant to go. It wasn't his voice in her head that she heard anymore, not either of their languages, but the untranslatable presence of him, a strange, alien weight sinking through her.

She stopped looking for release; he gave it to her anyway. He thought that was what she wanted, or deserved, or at least expected. She'd need some time to work out which of those, if any, was accurate. Not an orgasm as such: a conclusion, a completion. A wrapping-up of the narrative arc, a set point reached. She wasn't sure she appreciated him making that decision for her.

On the other hand, she was happy, and she was spent, and there would be plenty of time later to explore his orbital sense of love, and to bitch him out for assuming she couldn't or wouldn't understand.

"Hey," she said. She rolled off of him, a few inches away, letting a distance coalesce between them. The air drying the sweat on her skin.

"Hello." He blinked owlishly at her.

"Tell me that word again. The Gallifreyan one. What we are." She took his face in her hands, gentle but firm: don't hide, not again. Not now. "What am I to you?"

"The translation matrix is terrible with non-linear languages. It'd come out as gibberish. 'You're my squirrel, my instruction manual for a '92 Honda Civic.' Something like that."

She huffed out a laugh. Found herself curling up around him again, finding the angles and hollows of him, where she slotted into place. Where the ache and the loneliness subsided. He'd said that this might change them; maybe it had. So what. She could do worse than turning the metaphor into literal truth.

"A human would say 'I love you', I suppose." His fingers traced shapes on her back, along her spine.

"You're not human."

"I have noticed that, yes." He smiled, a small crooked thing. "We should probably go have an adventure now. See some planets. Save the universe from certain doom, you know, the usual."

"We're in a time machine," she said. "We can afford a little basking in the afterglow."

He hummed in agreement, contentment, tucked his head under her chin. His thumb rubbing circles over her shoulder blades, absentmindedly. Not a word or a phrase, not as such. A gesture, deliberate and with particular significance. She understood what it meant.

Eyes closed, she followed the paths of it, memorizing each loop and curve. Then, slowly, she repeated it back to him, her hand soft but firm at the base of his neck. Not quite in sync, but close enough. She felt the corners of his mouth turn up into a smile, the breath of a silent chuckle ghosting warm against her skin.

They stayed like that for a while.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Clara, the Doctor, and a sentient cleaning droid were hiding in a closet. It was not the strangest thing that had happened to them that day.

Sirens were wailing in the distance. Heavy footsteps approached, then passed. The Doctor flipped frantically through settings on the sonic screwdriver, attempting to open an access panel to the building's air-conditioning ducts.

"The two of you," the droid began. It whirred uncertainly. "You are not from the Agency. What are you?"

Clara sighed. "We're-"

"-Highly-trained spies from outer space," the Doctor interrupted. He looked inordinately pleased with himself. Even if settings 45 through 87 hadn't worked. "My name is...Antonio. This is Clara."

"How come you get a fake name and I don't?"

"Oh, great, now the robot knows we're in disguise. So much for my cunning plan. Well done."

"A terrible fake name doesn't equal a plan."

"I do not understand what is happening," the droid said plaintively.

Footsteps approached again. They fell silent, breaths held (and audio feedback modules suppressed). A light flickered on: the droid's third arm was uncoiled between them, a bulb on the end glowing gently.

"I can unlock this panel, if entering the air-filtration system is an activity in which you wish to engage. I will re-lock it behind you."

Clara smiled sadly, gratefully. "Thank you, unit 218. Be safe. Good luck."

The Doctor had already wriggled into the narrow passageway, clunking along ungracefully. She grasped the droid's fourth arm and shook it firmly, then turned and pulled herself through the opening, following him into the dark.

 

 

 


End file.
